I shot Lord Voldemort
by sssilvia
Summary: A lad with the worst conjunctivitis disease she had never seen pointed a stick against her, staring her surlily... Lene shot him. And now the Dark Lord is looking for revenge. LVOC humor. 2nd Chapter's on! PLEASE R&R!
1. Big trouble in Camden Town

_**Hi everybody!**_

_**This was my first fanfiction Now I have decided to translate it in English. I'm not sure I can do it properly, so please be merciful with me… and do not hesitate to correct my mistakes!**_

_**Of course every character is property of JK Rowling, except Lene Rice, whom I fear is mine.**_

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**1. Big Trouble in Camden Town**

Bellatrix Lestrange was a quite pretty woman. Oh, long time ago she could leave you breathless, naturally, but over a decade of Azkaban was not properly a beauty toner.

Her raven hair seemed a skein of silk threads lost in an attic, her skin was of the whitish colour of a depth fish and "tonic" was not the first word you think of watching her bottom.

Moreover Bellatrix Lestrange was mad. Totally insane, to be exact.

Even Thomas Riddle was mad. One can't choose "Voldemort" as a _nom de plume _and to be totally sane. "Flight of death"… quite melodramatic, indeed. On the other hand it was the nickname he had chosen when he was fourteen, so… oh, many, many years before.

The other peculiar traits of his insanity were a tenacious and persisting desire of immortality and a resolute preference for the dark colours. This was what people thought, at least. Anyone who prefers to look like a big rattlesnake provided to stay alive, not has only lost every dignity, but is completely nuts.

The magic community was quite unanimous on this.

The major part of them, nevertheless, was missing that, in a very peculiar way, Thomas Riddle was perfectly sane. In _his own_ way, of course.

There was a core of sanity in his madness, which conferred him a certain kind of very dangerous, delirious, clearness.

Now – not a kid anymore, he had to admit – his sanity/insanity was evolving.

From a strictly physiological point of view, he was practically a baby. He had come up from the broth of the cauldron which had return him to life no more than an year before.

Even counting his age with the serpents meter (which is probably better) he could be consider barely a teenager.

From the registry point of view, on the other hand, Thomas Riddle had passed the sixty.

One of the immutable facts of the human condition (or semi-human, if you prefer) is that adolescence and middle-age are both critical moments for a man.

Thoms Riddle was experimenting the dubious pleasure to live them together.

Is well-known that teenagers hormones get bigger than seals, and Riddle was understanding that his ones were perhaps more similar to varans, but not less heavily built.

And every man over-sixty begins to advert the impellent need to remark his virility. Abruptly. A sort of biological in-late clock, which cry "Do it, 'till you can!" day and night.

Thomas Riddle could be a little psychopathic, and surely had a good number of complexes - not least a latent inferiority complex quite annoying - but he did know what he wanted.

And generally was better if what he wanted hurried up to his hands, or the probabilities that it remained whole were minimum. This for the inferiority complex, even known as "the fox and the grapes complex". If he couldn't manage to obtain something, there was no reason that this something continued to exist in his same spatial-temporal coordinates.

It could be told that he was one of the more aggressive shine-ones on Earth.

Consequently, if Riddle wanted something, nine to ten he obtained it.

He would prefer ten to ten, to be sincere, but from that point of view he was registering some difficulties. A certain spectacled and badly disfigured kid, with a clucking and interfering voice which drives you crazy, for instance…

Thomas Riddle repressed the annoying thought and observed again Bellatrix. Obviously Rodulphus Lestrange was not a part of the equation for him, but Riddle wasn't sure he wanted, _metaphorical_ speaking, to lay his hands on her.

She was mad. Not that was so important, but madman sometimes do mad-things and Riddle wanted to suffer nothing like that.

Besides, she _yelped_.

When he reproached her, she yelped (and tented to crawl at his feet). If he commended her, she yelped. For God's sake, she yelped even if he barely stared at her! Riddle couldn't stand that kind of sound effect. He found that silence - or cry, according to the circumstances - was more appropriate.

Riddle fidgeted uneasily in his ebony throne and decided that should be better looking for something else.

Probably she yelled even when in bed, perhaps when sleeping too, and that was clearly too much.

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Magdalene Rice was definitely not the yelling kind. She didn't use to emit sounds with no meaning. It seemed, according to her, that her vocal chords were organs to use with parsimony. On the contrary: better do not use them at all, if even it was possible.

It was her second day of holiday in London and she had pronounced maybe four words. Habitually "How much for this?" and "You're crazy", often in this order.

The prices in London, in fact, didn't stop to thwart her. Obviously in LaBorde, Texas, things are very different.

Man, people could shoot you for less, in LaBorde!

In any case, now she was in holiday and she could pass over those trifles. She didn't like London as she expected. It was cold, damp, and vaguely oppressing.

The buildings tended to be grey and rather old (even if was commune opinion that they were "Victorian" and "historical") and there were cars everywhere.

Londoners were bumptious and pretended to not know her language ('English is my language!' she had shout to the Pakistan newspaper seller). Moreover they were obviously confused about the current t-shirt prizes.

Finally, at Camden Town open-air market, Magdalene (Lene for… well, anyone) found a t-shirt with a "Mind the gap" print on at the reasonable prize of five Pounds. That meant eight dollars more or less. That should be okay.

She liked the "Mind the gap" concept. Even if in the underground stations she had visited they didn't use it anymore (there weren't even gaps anymore), she liked it all the same. In the right perspective it could be a Zen saying. Not that Lene particularly loved Zen sayings, but time to time in her job an extra-ration of Zen could save your day.

Lene was a horse trainer for the "traditional" rodeos for tourists and it's quite difficult to convince a horse to do the hell you're telling him without, at least, some Zen concept to use at the right moment.

Lene, on the other hand, got a quite particular idea of "Zen".

"First shoot and then look ask questions" was a Zen saying in her opinion, as "Get still that goddamnit' tail" and "Keep serpents for the head".

She always had a good feeling with animals. Maybe less good with human beings, but you couldn't expect too much.

Human beings, she thought, were quite strange.

That morning, in London, she had observed some different species of them. There were the ones with purple hair stuck on their head, the ones in mourning with studded collars, the ones that seemed to come from a costume film (not necessarily set in the past) and the ones with long dressing gowns of gaudy colours. She had noted a lot of these lasts, a crew more unusual than others.

She couldn't remember to have seen this specie in LaBorde. Not that there were a lot of he other kind too.

The "gowned ones", as she had start to call them, seemed quite excited.

Maybe they were doing some underground-minority-social-ritual of theirs, like the ones reported by magazines. They ran here and there shaking some sticks and looked around as they expected to see a policeman ready to fine them.

More strange was that every time they perceived you were looking them, they smiled and started abruptly to whistle distractedly. Very curious.

And they weren't lads, too.

Lene had noted a pair of over-sixty. It seemed that these Englishmen had no sense of decency. Over-sixties going freak around like that…

She came back to look for another t-shirt when something stranger happened…

The "gowned ones" began to run all together up to Camden High Street, shaking theirs sticks in all directions.

Lene grew curious and moved a step in the passageway between the stalls. After all, that was a kind of public entertainment: she had got the right to look better, considering the amount of money she was spending in that city.

She kept her eyes peeled and noticed that the gowned ones run away untidily down to the canal. She moved another step to not lose even a second of… anything was going on.

At that point one of the gowned ones turned back and cried something to her (it should be "Attention!" but she wasn't sure with the English accent and everything…). Lene turned back and noticed that besides her there were some more strange gentlemen.

A long and thick pal, muffled up in a sort of black shroud (such a bad taste!) and with a serious conjunctivitis problem pointed his stick on her.

Suddenly Lene adverted that the situation was turning less funny of her previsions.

She couldn't think well over her sudden insight, because Mr. Conjunctivitis started to emit troubling green flashes. Lene had no idea of the meaning of that, but her practical Texan brain interpreted it as a hostility sign and acted of consequence.

She didn't waste her breath to cry. She waved a hand in front of her in an instinctual movement and, equally instinctively, handed her Colt Piton 33mm and shoot once.

Mr. Conjunctivitis, shoot blank in the middle of his chest, fell down, astonished.

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Thomas Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort, aka You-know-who, blinked twice and tried to focus on anything.

"Milord!" squawked a voices just near his ear (_too_ near, in his opinion) "How are you? Well?"

Riddle focused slowly on the dark ceiling (his bedroom ceiling, actually), some old black-wooden furniture and a series of cautious faces were staring at him.

The faces, obviously, owed to his Deatheaters. They are cautious because they didn't even know how seriously he's been injured, neither what to do in case of his premature departing. Last time they didn't behave very well.

"Yes, I'm well," said Riddle, in a spiteful voice. "Where is the damned muggle?"

The Deatheaters expression changed from cautious to guilty, then to fear.

"You're not telling me you didn't captured her, are you?" he hissed. One of the trick he was more pride of was to be capable to bring a room temperature under zero simply with his tone of voice.

The Deatheathers, in fact, look at him _frozen_.

"Very well" he murmured, intending all the contrary. He raised his eyes to verify that they had understood the implied reproach. Except Crubbe and Goyle, all the rest seemed to got it. "Off you go."

"But… Milord…" tried to object an intrepid one.

"Off you go" repeated Riddle, settling better his head on the pillows.

What the hell had happened? he thought, while the Deatheaters decamped pretending to going out in a decent way. It has been a plain half-bloods hunting. Two families that, by the way, had expressed very hideous opinions about him.

A muggle intervened between them and his Deatheaters.

Riddle had simply done the most obvious thing. He had thrown a mortal curse against the silly creature, to take her off.

And her… that stinking, sticky, filthy muggle… well, she'd had to shoot him. He reminded something about a sort of metal wands which muggles use to kill them each other. The right term was "gun".

Yes, when he was a child, at the orphanage, he heard about "guns". They shoot very small pieces of metal, very quickly, and can seriously injure you. He couldn't remember to have ever seen one of them.

And so the muggle had shot him…

But, he thought while remembering more clearly the facts, that wasn't the thing which had wrongfooted him the most…

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The gowned ones pressed around her. Their number increased, now, and they didn't seem dangerous while over-excited.

A man about sixty, the face half-hidden by a bowler and an impressing defective piece of nose, pointed a finger to her gun.

"Can you take that off?" he asked, in a harsh tone. He seemed quite nervous and a bit annoyed. Yet, he was the first of the gowned ones who told something sensed. The others, or buzzed like an beehive – impossible to understand the single statements – or emitted coloured flashes over bystanders. Bystanders didn't seem to suffer, on the contrary, smiled peacefully. Lene began to doubt if she had got the reason, after all, to shoot. Maybe the conjunctivitis lad wasn't menacing her.

She took off the gun and stared at the man with the bowler.

"I'm sorry. He seemed aggressive. I shot without thinking, really. He… er, he's right, isn't he?"

The other looked at her vacuously with the only visible eye.

All the gowned ones were pressing round her and looked at her vacuously. _Oh, shit… she had done off one of them…_

"Yea, I mean… he'll recover, won't he? He's… he's surviving."

A girl with pink hair stuck her head between the shoulders of two unsettled lads. Oh, well. So they've got them both: with the gowns _and_ with the strange hair.

"Sorry, but what ya saying?" asked the girl.

Lene raised her eyebrows. "The gentleman with conjunctivitis…" she told, and then she bit her lips. Probably it wasn't polite to speak like that. Very snob, these Briton. "The tall gentleman with the… er, with the dark suit, I mean. I shot him, but I didn't intended to hurt him. It's only that he waved that… stick? … in front of my nose and…"

The girl looked at her wide-eyed for a second. Then she exchanged a look whit a grey-hair, run down, lad beside her and began to laugh. In a few time the entire assembly was laughing out loudly.

"Conjunctivitis…" was sighing the girl with the pink hair. The other ones were splitting their sides with laughter.

Lene relaxed a bit. If they laughed she couldn't have done anything terrible, or not?

She swallowed. "So he's fine…" she ventured.

The gowned ones slowly calmed down. "I really hope not" grumbled someone, in half-voice.

"What's your name, miss?" asked the one with the tired appearance, wiping his tears.

"Magdalene Rice. Lene."

"Strong to be a muggle!" someone said, always in a half-voice.

"_American _(1), not… whatever he said" corrected Lene. The man with the tired faces smiled largely at her.

"Miss Rice, I can assure you that no one has the intention to criticise you to… had shot… Lord…" a thrill of horror passed along the crowd "… Him" concluded the man. "But we'd have some question for you, if it's possible."

Lene blasphemed mentally. She had heard right: _Lord_. She had forgotten that in England they had nobility, too. Probably she shot a member of the Royal Family, to add bad luck to bad luck. What will they do? Is there the death penalty, in the UK?

"About what you do _before_ shooting, to be exact" added a red-haired man, zealous. Lene had noticed that he hadn't take off the eyes from her gun for a second. He seemed charmed by it.

She sighed.

"Do I need a layer?" she said.

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(1)This is an untranslatable pun between "Americano" and "Babbano". In Italian, in fact, Muggle is translated with "Babbano" that sound similar to " a silly one". I can't find a word to use in English, apart "muddle", of course, and it doesn't fit the statement.

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_Please R&R!_


	2. What did I do?

_Hi everybody! Here it is the new chapter. I'm sorry about the delay, but, believe me, it's freaking hard to translate in a language which isn't yours._

_Of course if an Italian speaking reader decides to be so nice to do it in my place he or she'll be welcome:) _

_I'm very sorry of the unavoidable mistakes, too. Do not hesitate to correct me, and I'll adjust them._

2. What did I do?

Thomas Riddle carefully examined his reflection in the mirror. It was one of those objects which habitually haunt the houses of every bad character. It was very high and with a gilded frame, almost blackened by the time. It should well come from a stock bought on sale from the Snow White's Evil Queen.

_That_ kind of object, all in all.

This mirror, in any case, could hardly tell to Riddle that he's the fairest of them all. It'd never dare.

It merely did its job and reflected docilely his master's pale and skeleton-like chest, marked by a pink scare on the left. The bullet had passed trough his left lung – so they told him. He didn't doubt of it, seen the annoyance he adverted at every breath.

Obviously the hole had been closed immediately by magic, but the scare remained.

Riddle's serpentine nostrils quivered with the thinking that that filthy muggle dared to mess up with his new body.

Now, him neither could think that his new body was such a beauty, but, damn, it was _his_ body, and that silly muggle had riddled it with holes!

Again, nevertheless, he thought that the word "muggle" didn't fit her well.

He cast a thoughtful look at his reflection (he smiled cruelly back) and tried to momentary set aside the thinking.

His Deatheaters were looking for more about her, there was no sense in continuing to rack his brain for it.

In a few hours he'll had more data. Well, if in the meanwhile none of them got lost or got assaulted from some pet (it was already happened).

He half-closed his eyes and examined his face. No visible wrinkle: good.

"Who can say I'm sixty?" he jested, looking the mirror.

"No one, Milord" answered it, with bored voice. "And now do comb that forelock, please."

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"What did I do?" was shouting Lene, in that moment.

She was sitting at a long table's end, surrounded by intent-looking faces. They seemed to be between interest and disbelief.

Lene, too, was in disbelief. Practically astonished.

"You did create a magic shield," repeated the man with the tired face, courteously.

Lene blinked repeatedly, than started to giggle.

Those people are really amazing. They had got her on a car, which had seemed to appeare from thin air in Camden High Street. (It didn't really materialized, of course: it probably had popped out from a garage in the neighbourhood.)

They had introduced her in a grim house. For some inesplicable reason they gave her a piece of paper and there was an address written on it (12 Grimmaud Place). She hadn't yet repeated it mentally, that they pushed her in.

There were only two people from the beginning, the man with the tired face and the older one with the red hair. But gradually the huge kitchen with the dark ceiling was filled with people.

Oddly enough, there was no trace of electricity. There was some oil lamps (or so they seemed), some torches, and the stoves were fed with wood. In spite of that, the tea was served immediatly. Ah, those Britons!

And those people were really strange. Maybe some kind of nut naturists. Even agreeable people. But now they were exaggerating.

"I hope you understand that you've told a nonsense," she said, as soon as she managed to stop laughing.

The man with the tired face sighed. He scratched his nape and returned to smile at her, as _she_, not they, was the nut.

"Miss Rice…" he began.

"You can call me Lene. And your name?" Let him talk, she thought. Try to work something out.

"Remus Lupin."

"Excellent. Now, Remus… listen to me. I can be wrong, but it seems that you… and all these kind and folkloristic gentlemen cultivate the odd convinction to be… how should I say? To be _magic_?"

A sudden amusing flashed through his eyes. He gestured her to continue. He didn't seemed particularly mad.

"And… er, I have to suppose…" she kept on, trying to speak clearly and slowly "… that this is connected with some British tradiction unknown in the United State? I'd like to take the opportunity to say that I'm absolutely open to… multicoltural exchange… and, well…"

Except she was not sure at all to be open to multicoltural exchange, those people reaction was not the one she expected.

She expected a series of polite explanations, or, at least, some expression of anger… but the gowned ones seemed to do their best not to laugh.

The man who had presented himself as Remus Lupin cleared his throat and answered, in a civil tone: "You see, mi… er, Lene, we _are_ wizards."

She raised her eyes to the ceiling.

"Very well! Execute a charm, then!"

That's it! She thought, now everythig was clear! Those nuts thought to have magic wands!

"Wingardium leviosa," said Lupin, and his tea cup rose gently into the air.

Lene wrinkled and passed cautiously the hand over and under the cup. No jokes, there were no threads.

She raised the glaze to the self-declared wizard and stared him intently.

"Now, now. This was easy" she stated, with the typical, obtuse insistence of the Texan who doesn't undestand. "Now it's me that tells you what to do, and you try to do execute it."

She took the pen off from her breast pocket.

"Here. Let disappeare this."

Lupin moved the wand again and her pen vanished. Her $150 pen, to be exact.

"Uh, I suppose that now I'll find it in my pocket, wont't I? Or maybe under my ear."

The other raise an eyebrow, authentically disoriented.

"Yes, of course. It's always like this. Let it reappeare, please."

The pen reappeared in the middle of the table. It reappeared with absolute clarity, without a puff of smoke or something.

"Do you belive me, now?" asked Lupin, politely.

Lene swallowed.

"Can I have a Jack Daniel's?" she whispered, at the end.

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When the firs Deatheather appeared near Tom Riddle, the snow had just start to fall again. He kept on watching out of the window for some many moments, following the little, almost luminescent flakes. Finally he turned his head.

"Ah, Lucius," he said, as a greeting, with the icy voice for which he was famous. He practised for years to obtain the right liquid-nitrogen intonation and by now he was near to perfection. Sometimes he scared the death out of himself.

"Milord," mormoured the other, bowing to the floor.

You could say a lot against Lucius Malfoy, but you couldn't say he didn't know how to lick an arse, in case of need. Only, this time, Riddle wasn't in the right mood for that.

With a brusque gesture of the hand he invited Lucius to pick himself up.

"So. What did you find out about the muggle?"

A little, satisfied, smile rose on the other's face. A Riddle's glance was sufficient for the little smile to be reabsorbed as a drop of water in the ocean.

"Firs of all, she's not a muggle, Milord." As a matter of fact he always succeeded to pronounce the capital letter. Certainly a talent to cultivate, thought Riddle, cynically.

"Indeed," he said, irritated. "Can't say why, but I suspected that. I want to know _who_ she is."

Malfoy recoiled. Even his icy voice was overshadowed when he became sarcastic. Oh, _that_ was awful.

"Her name is Magdalene Rice, Milord. She came from Texas, United States of America. Her adoptive parents were…"

"Lucius?" cut him short Riddle, mellifluous. "Can I have the edited version?"

The other one wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his black overcoat.

"Seems that his natural parents were both pureblood wizards. A very ancient peerage, I have to add. Actually…" he emitted an uncomfortable giggle "…I should have one or two ancestors in common with her!"

Riddle simply looked him blankly. His slit eys with the red iris and the lanceolate pupil were not particularly reassuring, even because they were completely still.

"But they died when she was very young. She was adopted by a couple of muggles."

"And…" hissed Riddle. He didn't like prolixity, and Lucius was by then very aware of it.

"And, apparently, the story ends here. She didn't attend any wizarding school… she never took part in any magical meeting… it seemes that she neither have a wand. I think she's a _renegade_."

Lucius pronounced the word with more disgust of the one he abitually riserved for muggles.

Riddle instead… well, Riddle was aware that, merely on theory, existed the possibility that a wizard renounced to all his powers and decided to live as a muggle… but such an absurdity was far to his understanding. Why on earth someone sound of mind (or not, as in his case) would ever desire to live as a muggle?

As far as Riddle knew these cases were really rare and usually denoted a certain psychophysical lack of balance. If he well remebered, there was a wizard who had repudiate magic after killing by mistake his wife and children (a damn weak justification, in Riddle's opinion)… but, honestly, he was little more than an idiot even before.

"Very well, Lucius… off you go."

Malfoy raised the stare on him. He expected at least a comment, maybe a reward.

"Off you go, I said," repeated Riddle.

While the crack of the disappearance was still resounding in the air, he turned toward the window and he came back to the observation of the snow flakes which performed their movements in the dark air of the night.

A renegade?

No, Riddle didn't believe so.

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So now she was a sort of fair-ground wonder.

There was a few which Lene liked of her new condition. Her new accomodation was actually a lot cheaper of the B&B where she was lodged before, if you didn't mind the mould and the sporadic cry of the portrait in the lobby (MUDBLOOD! SCUM OF THE SOCIETY!)… and, to be honest, she couldn't moan about the meal. The well-built lady named Molly had served her some pancakes which was really good, even if very British.

But:

1) She was practically home-segregated (It appears that the conjunctivitis guy had not conjunctivitis at all, but he had instead the bad habit to kill the people. And she was, now by now, his more likely second voice on his wish-list.)

2) They called her witch (And they hastened to precisate that it was a really good thing, really… Lene would prefer to be a sorceress, thank you very much.)

3) Everyone stared at her in a very disconcerted manner and (inexplicably) looked for somethig on her forehead. When they didn't find anything they seemed a lot more disconcerted.

4) The man with the red hair (Arthur Weasley, usband of the Lady of the Pancake) continued to ask her strange questions about _eclecticity_. Lene found him a little disquieting.

But at the moment all of this was overshadowed by the lady in front of her. She was told that she's a Very Big Shot of the wizards or somethig like that. Besides her there was a guy with an aggressive expression who was no less than the Minister of Magic.

The Very Big Shot had a grey, tight, bun. She had to have continuous headache. She had the expression of someone who just ate a lemon with the peel and the strongest handshake Lene had ever experienced.

"Well, miss Rice… you'll be a little bit upset, won't you?" Big Shot began, with an encouraging smile.

"Yep. Really. Sorry, I didn't understand who you are." Big Shot or Little Shot, Lene had had already enough of her.

"Oh, I'm Minerva McGonagall. I run the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Wizardry school: logic. Was only obvious that they had a school of magic too. Lene vacuously smiled.

"I have to say that it's not an everyday happening to find out a witch so… grown-up. You are the first, in fact. I'm sure that almost ten different people had already told you the same."

"Right. And they keep on watching my forehead. Do you know why?"

McGonagall covered her mouth with one hand, but her eyes clearly revealed that she's going to laugh. Strange woman, that Big Shot. Since then she was all nosetrills quiver and forehead frowning.

"Oh… well…" she gave a little cough "It's for Harry Potter, I suppose. He's the only one untill now who survived to a mortal curse."

Her severe eyes seemed to scan Lene, now. "But in his case it's different, naturally. You had never been hit by the Avada Kedavra, in fact."

"By _what_?"

"Avada Kedavra, the killing curse."

Lene limited to swallow.

"The impressive thing, nevertheless, is that you manage to create a magic shield which partially deviated the curse. Without wand."

"Partially deviated…"

"I suppose Voldemort wasn't aiming."

The Minister of Magic, who since then was rimained quiet and still, visibly started and, so seemed to Lene, growled.

Lene scratched her hair trying to remember something connected to what Minerva McGonagall had just said. Nothing, her brain was empty. She threw in the sponge.

"I'm sorry, I know that I'd have to know it… probably they had already told me dozen of times, but what's this… volder… vodermor…"

McGonagall eyebrows seemed to shot to the ceiling. "_You-know-who_" she repeated, in a harsh tone. Lene had the impression that she was making an effort not to add anythig.

"Ah. Got it. The bad wizard. The one who tried to hit me with… how did you say that is named that curse? Abracadabra?"

"Avada Kedavra. It seems to me that you're in a very good mood to be in peril of life."

Lene laughed hysterical. In a very good mood, wasn't she? Those fellows maybe were wizards, but not for certain psychologists!

When she managed to control the laughing, she cried: "Can someone explain me all the bullshit from the first to the last, please, instead of throwing pieces of information!"

The scandalized face of Mrs. Big Shot made her feel better immediately.

&&&&&&&&&&&

It seems that Remus Lupin had talked to her for hours.

The guy was smart, in his own way, and he told the events clearly. And it appears that Lene's frequent yawning didn't offended him.

The fact is that all the blablabla about magic, wizards, curses was boring to death. Yes, from a certain point of view it could be interesting, but all of that it wasn't her business, was it? For God's sake, she lived in Texas! Surely this Voldemort of her foot won't go looking for her among the cows.

"We're going to buy you a wand."

And, after all, he surely understood that she had shot by mistake. Anybody could understand it. Things like that happens. She dindn't intend to hurt him. He didn't died, neither.

"Did you heard me? I told that we're going to buy your wand."

No, probably this Lord Voldemort already forgot about her. And…

"Miss Rice!"

Lene raised her stare, amazed. Why did Lupin begin to shout? He was always so phlegmatic…

"And then the curse bounced back from him… I was listening, mr. Lupin," she guessed.

He turned to her an amenable smile. "No, you didn't. If you had done it you'd know that I dropped the subject "Voldemort" a long time ago and I was now announcing you that we're going to buy a wand."

"Really? Can I have one too?"

"Yes, miss Rice. You're a witch, so you can have a wand."

"Ah… cool."

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, fascinating."

"I'm not so old you can't use the word _cool_ in front of me, do you know?"

"…"

"I was simply taking note that it's the first time you signify a certain enthusiasm."

"I deal with horses as a job, 'you know, and I'm not accustomed to hear long speeches. Horses don't speak, no matter."

Lupin bristled an eyebrow. "_The horses speak no matter_, or _the horses don't speak, no matter_? (1)"

"Ah… both of them, I guess. I mean: they don't talk a lot and it's not really important…"

"But they talk, sometimes."

"Not much. They ask for things, mostly."

"Things," repeated Lupin.

"Yes. As more forage or less crop."

Lupin was gazing her intensely. Since she knew him it was the first time she saw his nosetrills quivering.

"And do you answer them?" He seemed irritated.

"Sometimes. They tend to grow boring."

The other one kept a big breath and released the air slowly.

"You're telling me that you… _chat_ with horses, since ever, they answer you – sometimes – and that you never, _never_ suspected to be a witch?"

"Everybody speaks with horses, in Texas. I mean… the ones who owe a horse," she rectified.

"Are you make fun of me?"

Lene put a hand on her heart. "I'll never do it, mr. Lupin."

Lupin sighed and sat again on the armchair.

"Explain it with your own words," he sighed.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&

"An equiphone?" Lord Voldemort asked. He was seated on his throne. Actually it is a big black-wooden chair with the arms. He call it throne for greater convenience. Only to shorten the sentences, in fact. "And what does it mean?"

"She speaks with horses."

"Oh, yes?" Voldemort didn't frequent a lot the muggle cinemas, so he didn't think 'oh, like _The horse whisperer'_, but: "How very strange."

He passed a hand on his face. As a parselmouth, the animals which were not snakes didn't insterest him a lot.

Besides, the language of the snakes was often more fashinating of the human one. For instance, snakes didn't yelp, while Bellatrix was yelping in that very moment. As always, however.

"Can you stop with it?" he tried to ask, for the umpteenth time.

The yelp increased a little, while Bellatrix slavishly crawled at his feet.

"Forgive me, master…"

Voldemort kicked her away, causing a whimpering.

Well, at least he obtnained a bit of sound diversification.

He scratched his chin, thoughtful, then he stooped on her as he wanted to watch her closely.

"Bellatrix," he gently called her. She continued to stare at the floor. It must have been something very interesting on the tiles.

"Look at me, Bellatrix. I have to ask you something."

The deatheater raised slowly her head, her large eyes liquid as a dog ones.

"Do you yelp like that even when… d'you know, how can I say, even in your moments of intimacy?"

She turned him a gaze of pure terror (and, naturally, she yelped higher).

Voldemort leaned a hand on her face and pushed her away, sending her to tumble on the floor a pair of metres away.

"As I guessed," he muttered.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

"Dear lady, you're in the right place!" the little man with the watery eyes trilled, while gesturing to enter.

Lene looked around. It seemed thet every avaiable square inch in the little shop was packed with small wooden boxes, long and narrow.

Lene looked at Lupin interrogatively.

"He said that you need a wand. This is the place for you. I don't want to boast, but the Ollivanders produce wands since five generations. Name a famous wizard, and nine to ten he was one of our custumers."

"Merlin the Wizard?" Lene couldn't help herself to ask.

Ollivander cast her a reproachful stare.

"Obviously Merlin manufactured his wands by himself, dear miss. But it was a long time ago… this shop didn't already exist. Then we evolve, didn't we?"

"Sure we did," agreed Lene, magnanimous. In the end she had had her point, no need to be pitiless.

Ollivander slipped behind the dusty counter and cast her a piercing look.

"Mh… American, of course. Which kind of wand did you use since now? Something of the Salem Manufacture Inc.?"

"I think that it's better we pretend that this is her first wand in absolute, if you don't mind," interfered Lupin, politely. Lene smiled to him, grateful.

Ollivander grumbled somethig and slipped off a little box from a pile, producing a sort of controlled seism in that part of the shop.

"Let's try with this one. Eight inches, whitethorn wood, with a core of unicorn hair. Very elegant, very feminine."

Lene kept the wand from his hands and observed attentively.

"Do you mind waving it?"

Lene did it. And it was an awful idea.

First of all, both the bunches of grey hair Ollivander had above the ears caught fire. Then a great burst of acid green flame lightning rose from the middle of the floor, blackened the ceiling as a dragon had coughed against it. At last the west wall of the shop blew up with a roar.

Lupin put out Ollivander's hair with a jet of water coming from the top of his wand. Then, with his habitual phlegm, handed a handkerchief to Lene.

She passed it on her face and noticed that the previously white fabric was now lampblack.

"No. I'll tell it's not the wand for you," concluded Ollivander, cautiously removing it from her fingers.

He dug in the mass of the wands fallen from the shelves and he handed her another one.

"An energetic wand for an energetic temper," he commented. Then he positioned himself some metres far. "Ten inches, poplar wood, a tooth of dragon inside."

Lene cautiously moved the wand to and fro.

A single ball of green light sprung from the top at high velocity, rebounded on the ceiling, hit a candelabrum (knocking it over), hissed over Lupin's head and broke against a window producing a very disturbing sound nail-on-the-blackboard like.

Ollivander checked precautionary his burnt bunches of hair, then retook the wand.

Without uttering a word he opened a folding ladder and climbed up to the last shelf on the east wall.

"Here. Try this one."

He was handing her a dark wooden wand, very polished and with bronze shades.

Lene, by then extremely embarrassed, waved imperceptibly the top of the wand. It sprung up a pleasant cascade of golden sparks.

Both Ollivander and Lupin let them escape a sigh of relief.

"I knew that this one was right for you," declared the seller, satisfied.

Lena was happily spurting sparks from her new wand.

"And this one is made of what?" she asked.

Ollivander seemed suddenly absorbed in the contemplation of the ceiling.

"Mahogany, eleven inches, and…" the last part of the statement shaded in an indinstinct grumbling.

Lupin, who was nearer, put a hand on his mouth, pretending to stroke his chin.

"Excuse me?"

Ollivander raised on her a determinate stare.

"Lion wrapper."

Lene blinked softly. "I can't understand." Well, it didn't sound good as unicorn hair or tooth of dragon, but, really, even a lion should go, but… slowly a peculiar thought was emerging from her brain.

"Not the waste paper of a snack, it is?"

Ollivander seemed very busy in looking the floor.

"I thought it has to be something… well, _magic_?" she insisted, with unusual perspicacity.

Ollivander finally raised the eyes. In his irises was burning the light of the explorer, of the scientist, of the inventor.

"Oh, but it's _very_ magic! There was a winning code in it! For a muggle eclecticity object!" His explanation seemed to satisfy him completely.

Lene waved her wand again.

Well, the sparks were really _nice_…

(1) Ok, I did my best on this, but it doesn't work all the same. In Italian the "no matter" thing was somethig completely different and there was a qui pro quo about talking or not-talking horses. Sorry about that, folks.

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_Please R&R!!!!!!!!!_


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